The story broke in Germany last week, but the news quickly circulated around the world — and Ronaldo issued a statement on Twitter to address the claim on Wednesday.

"I firmly deny the accusations being issued against me," he said, "Rape is an abominable crime that goes against everything that I am and believe in. Keen as I may be to clear my name, I refuse to feed the media spectacle created by people seeking to promote themselves at my expense."

In a second tweet, he added: "My clear conscious will thereby allow me to await with tranquillity the results of any and all investigations."

The tweets follow a statement issued by Ronaldo's lawyer, Christian Schertz, on September 28 which read: "The reporting in Spiegel is blatantly illegal. It violates the personal rights of our client Cristiano Ronaldo in an exceptionally serious way.

"This is an inadmissible reporting of suspicions in the area of privacy. It would therefore already be unlawful to reproduce this reporting. We have been instructed to immediately assert all existing claims under press law against Spiegel, in particular compensation for moral damages in an amount corresponding to the gravity of the infringement, which is probably one of the most serious violations of personal rights in recent years."

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that Ronaldo was being sued by a woman in Nevada who accused him of raping her in 2009 and hiring a team of "fixers" to "obstruct the criminal investigation and trick her into keeping quiet."

Las Vegas police also confirmed to the AP on Monday that a sexual assault case from 2009 brought by the woman named in the lawsuit had been reopened.